In Japan today, over 30,000 children are in the care of the state. Drawing on his long-term fieldwork in an institution for such children, Roger Goodman describes what happens to them in a country with no professional social workers and little tradition of adopting or fostering children in need of care. He explains how, in the 1990s, the convergence of several factors--in particular, Japan's rapidly declining birth-rate, its signing of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, and its "discovery" of child abuse--led to a new role for child protection institutions. In the...

The issue of how Japanese society operates, and in particular why it has succeeded, has generated a wide variety of explanatory models, including the Confucian ethic, classlessness, group consciousness, and uniqueness in areas as diverse as body images and language patterns. In Ideology and Practice in Modern Japan the contributors examine these models and the ways in which they have sometimes been used to create a sense of Japaneseness, that obscures the fact that Japan is actually an extremely complex and heterogenous society. In particular, practice at the micro-level of society is...

What does the East Asian welfare model actually offer, and does it really exist? In this study of the subject, the authors explore the experiences of six societies in East Asia and examine the realities behind the political rhetoric. The role of the state within welfare systems is compared via case studies of pensions, health insurance, housing and personal social services.

For many politicians and observers in the West, East Asia has provided a broad range of positive images of the state's intervention in society. Neoliberals grew excited by popular welfare systems that cost little in expenditure and bureaucracy. Social-democrats thought they had found a model for social cohesion and equality. In fact the reality in East Asia is rather different from these stereotypes.
In this book six specialists of six different societies in East Asia (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, China, Singapore and Hong Kong) examine the role of the state in their welfare systems. There...

Japanese society is often referred to as an example of a homogeneous culture moderated by an ethos of groupism. Yet often enough homogeneity is its own worst enemy as norms are required and enforced at the centre of power to the detriment of individual and human rights.

This text puts forth a sociology of Japanese youth problems showing that the Japanese media draw on an equally, if not more, perplexing gallery of social categories when it discusses youth than affluent Western societies.